All That Useless Beauty (Thank God, I'm Only a Writer and Not a TV-Anchor on Botox)

1.
Why aren't there any ugly TV anchors?

Why are they all cut from the same cheerful cloth - with the same wrinkle-free faces that are pumped up on Botox? Why do they all have 50,000 dollars eye lashes and silicone tongues, darting out of their mouths like randy reptiles? Couldn't we get the ugly news from someone ugly ?

I want to start a movement for fat middle aged weathermen, whose teeth rattle every time they say tsunami. But unfortunately, America is short on hideous but talented pundits who don't look like poodles.

2.
Actually, that's a stupid comment. I apologize.

Appearance has always been king. Talent is so 33 BC, so we have to suffer with all that useless beauty from TV personalities who look as if they've spent half their lives shaving their armpits.

And this hideous beauty is everywhere.

Today, even twelve year olds get their boobs fixed. In Hollywood, it's against the law removing your dog's poop on the sidewalk without wearing full make up. And that goes for the men as well.


3.
Sometimes I tell myself, "Thank God I'm a writer". Writers aren't supposed to be handsome. On the contrary, people expect us to have dandruff. Writers can drool while working - we're even allowed to fart while we cherry pick our adverbs. I mean, have you ever met a fuckable novelist or playwright in your life, except for Euripides, perhaps?

So please excuse me now, but I have to get back to my novel. I love working on it. The only thing that worries me is the day I need a new author photo.


****

Robert Mugabe Must Go (He Probably Has a Small Penis, Too)

1.
You should always laugh dictators out of the room.

Tyrants are afraid of satire. They don't want to appear fragile, pathetic, and ridiculous. But they always are. New scientific studies show that dictators have incredible small penises. And bad digestion just like Hannibal Lecter.

Robert Mugabe is no different. The man is 86 years old, for Christ's sake. He can't even kick his dog without getting lumbago. Every time he scares us, we should picture him in the shower with kidney stones the size of bowling balls.

See him now. Robert Mugabe is reaching for the soap with his saggy balls flapping in the wind. How can you take the man seriously?


2.
Tendai Tagarira is a poet-in-exile from Zimbabwe. Right now he lives in Denmark as a guest of Danish PEN, and we're happy to have him. Tendai Tagarira works on 87 poems called Robert Mugabe Must Go.

The poems are meant as a "celebration" of Mugabe's birthday in February. Tendai plans to travel around Denmark reciting his poems to increase the awareness of Robert Mugabe's crimes.

"And I don't care if I only have an audience of two," he says.


3.
I met Tendai Tagarira at a reading at Danish PEN in Copenhagen. He's a great guy with a good sense of humor. Unfortunately, he knows a thing or two about censorship. Or self censorship as Robert Mugabe likes to calls it.

A "responsible" citizen doesn't criticize the regime because what is there to criticize? Zimbabwe is doing fine. According to Mugabe and a few other retards.

Backs
Buttocks
burned and bruised
in the name
of MUGABE!

Skulls bludgeoned
eyes gorged out
tongues cut out
in the name
Of ROBERT MUGABE!

Homes burned
Heads hacked off
Throats slit open
in the name
of ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE!


4.
Well, maybe Zimbabwe isn't doing as well as Mugabe claims?

Maybe Tendai Tagarira's fine little poem is closer to the truth. Robert Mugabe Must Go is a work in progress. And a promising one, too.

So hey, if you run into Zimbabweans in exile reading poems aloud on town squares or in strip joints, please stop and listen to them, and sign their petitions.

Why? Because Robert Mugabe Must Go. Until he does we should picture him on the loo screaming for another pink diaper.

*****

Also read Don't Be Cruel to Mugabe. He's Such a Sensitive Dictator

Website for Danish PEN and PEN American Center